by Ayse Hafiza
The Ghost in the Window
Ayse Hafiza
Copyright © 2018 by Ayse Hafiza
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Dedicated to those who see what others can’t explain.
Contents
1. The Past
2. George and Lizzy
3. The Future
4. The Police
5. George stays home
6. Frank and Jane
7. The Curse
8. A New Family
9. Lizzy comes home
10. The Funeral
11. Reunion
12. Family Life
13. In The Garage
14. Two Souls
15. History
16. Argument
17. The Break
18. Back home
19. New Normal
20. The Crime
21. Home Again
22. After School Club
23. Together Again
Also by Ayse Hafiza
Afterword
About the Author
1
The Past
Old age had soured George Blades like a fine wine gone bad. Acidic like vinegar, he made those who came into contact with him shudder. He had that effect on all the neighbors. He knew the local children pulled faces, and he also knew the women in their aprons who stood on their doorsteps nodded politely as he passed, but behind his back they scowled. Even the people who ran the local shops gossiped about his eternal bad attitude well after he finished his purchase and left their store.
Everyone agreed, Mr. George Blades was a difficult man.
Age had ravished him, and as he lost his youth, he also lost his tolerant and cheerful personality. Old age had stolen his vigor. His papery skin clung to his bones and his once powerful hands now showed bulbous white knuckles. Blue veins protruded above his flesh, and now his hands shook when he hadn’t had a drink.
In his quiet moments George was introspective, often wondering at what point in his life he had decided to stay in this unending bad mood, and why.
He valued formality as any gentlemen did. Mr. Blades didn’t show himself easily, not to anyone. There was no one to confide in only his wife Lizzy, and even she was kept at arm’s length. Distance between them discernible in the upstairs of their three-bedroom home, where they shared a bathroom but maintained separate bedrooms.
The only loyal companion George Blades had was his faithful dog, Buster. The golden Labrador with his never-ceasing energy always looked for approval since he was a puppy. George Blades denied him nothing and loved him dearly. Evident by the way the silly dog always wagged his tail whenever George fetched his leash and his panting next to George as he lay his heavy hands on the dog’s head to stroke him in the evenings. He used to jump onto Georges bed and warm it, keeping him company all night. That wonderful dog, it had been George and Buster against the world, and the world included Lizzy. The dog had aged too, his eyes losing their youthful shine, his hair losing its luster. George hadn’t noticed because Buster was always glad to see him, and that dog was the only living thing that made him smile.
George missed him dearly. That foolish partially blind fat dog had got himself run over a few weeks before. There was no point taking the unmoving two parts of the dog to the vet. The tire tread of the car left a pattern through the abdomen and the open eyes of his unmoving corpse had haunted George. Robbed his sleep. It wasn’t until George lost the dog, he realized exactly how important Buster had been. He used the shovel he kept in his garden shed to scrape the two halves of the dog off the road and into a black bag. He dug a big hole in the back garden under the oversized rosebush and buried Buster.
He could see the pity Lizzy had for him, it showed in her eyes, but George didn’t want to talk about it. He wouldn’t speak for two weeks after the death of his best friend, his loyal dog. A grown man who cried was not a man at all by his definition, so he shed tears in silence with his pillow to muffle the sound. At night, he felt the spot where Buster would have lay, his foot touching the cold spot that used to be warm with Buster’s fur and flesh. He missed the way the dog would put his front paw over George’s foot, the action was one which made them both feel safe and since the stupid mutt had died George had not been the same.
Although George Blades had become grumpy long before the loss of Buster, the death of his most faithful friend hit him hard. Buster and his unwavering devotion was worth a million Lizzy’s. George wondered why he was so harsh toward his wife of over fifty years and his mind wandered to all the silly things she had said or done. There was a library to reference. Then his mind wandered to the secret stash of love letters that Lizzy kept in the attic. The ones he wasn’t meant to know about. When it came to loyalty Lizzy could learn a thing or two from Buster. George could recite them verbatim, and in the nights since Buster's death, he found himself doing so.
Darling Lizzy,
I would like to dispense with the pleasantries. I know that you say you love George, and you value doing your duty to be a good wife, but I know deep down that you can be happy with me. Love, duty, and happiness are not the same thing.
I have and always will love you, and with all my being I offer you happiness, of that you must never be in doubt. If only you were to look at me and smile, I would know I had won the world.
I love you to the depths of the ocean, even if you will not have me I will love and admire you from afar. Come and see me in France this summer?
Please come Lizzy I beg you so I can tempt you to run away with me.
Your lover and most ardent admirer
Arthur
When George found the letters, he sunk to the floor of the attic. Sitting in the dust in a stupor reading the letters, again and again, feeling the quality of the faintly scented paper. And observing the ink splotches, he believed them to be where her teardrops fell. Tears distorted Arthurs handwriting. He had stumbled on the small box of her belongings when the water tank in the attic had been playing up.
Of course, she thought he was up in the attic fixing things and being a man, but he was up there reading the confessions of undying love she had never mentioned. The words had been seared into George’s brain. Words which Arthur, his old friend, had used to try and steal George’s woman. In the end, George could recite them as if they were the Lord’s Prayer, but he never did. George had put the letters back in the box and carried on as usual. Mainly because he didn’t have the vocabulary to address the traitorous letters in the attic. Traitorous because they should have been burned a long time ago, not wrapped with a purple hair ribbon and placed with care in a dusty box of keepsakes.
George didn’t know how to respond, so he thought back and recalled that summer when they were all a lot younger. Lizzy had suggested they go together to visit Arthur, he had thought nothing of it. George was glad that Lizzy had adopted his wayward friend. Part of George would have been happy to go and see Arthur even if it was to gloat that Lizzy wore his wedding band. But the factory offered overtime and he needed it to buy them a house, so they never left South London. He had remembered the flicker of disappointment in her eyes, but he thought it was because she wanted a foreign holiday. He never once thought Lizzy had intentions toward Arthur because until he found the letters, she had never given him reason to doubt her.
Arthur was George Blades oldest and dearest friend, he made no secret of his admirati
on of Mrs. Elizabeth Blades. So, finding letters addressed to his wife from Arthur was not shocking, not really. The fact Lizzy had held onto the letters, not destroying them was a secret rebellion. And knowledge of them sitting above his head as he lay in his bed in the room directly below fueled the divide between husband and wife.
If George Blades had been a younger man, he would have offered Arthur a fight. Although no one had seen hide nor hair of Arthur after he had been stationed in France during the war. George had wished death on him when he found the letters, it was just like Arthur to covet what he wasn’t allowed and break the rules. The only thing that saddened George about those letters was that Arthur was likely already dead in an unknown grave somewhere and that was all there was too it. When George had found those letters, he wished for Arthur’s death again a million times over. But now in later life, he envied Arthur, wishing that he himself was dead. Old age can do that to a man. . .make him envy those who are worm food.
The day he found the letter, George Blades never mentioned them. To acknowledge their existence could lead to learning the truth. How did his wife feel about Arthur? Had she ever been unfaithful? Why did Arthur have reason to hope? Had George been cuckolded? If they had gone to France would he have returned alone?
The questions taunted him for years. He didn’t know how to raise those questions without becoming a man obsessed, so in the end he decided that to mention them would be in poor taste.
Her secret would go with him to the grave, he would never expose her. He would not say words that could never be taken back and soon fifty years of their externally successful marriage clocked by. But keeping her secret didn’t mean he was letting her off. No, quite the contrary, he made her pay the price. George made her pay every single day, either with his bitterness or disdain. His critique of her food or his excessive drinking. He made her pay because he was sure she left those letters over his head on purpose, some sort of revenge. Some way in which she was holding Arthur, his words and promises, over George. He made her pay alright, not that she ever knew why.
He grew especially bitter with Lizzy, which was sad being that she had once been the light of his life. She hadn’t aged well, but George didn’t see how he added to her premature aging. He tolerated her, it wasn’t love and every so often after she had fetched his slippers or served him tea, he wondered why he felt so compelled to hate her.
Then he thought about the daughter that wasn’t born. The one Lizzy lost because she went outside with the wrong shoes on and slipped when she was pregnant. He said he didn’t blame her, but that was a lie. He absolutely blamed her. The image of her sitting on her bottom, and blood soaking the lower part of her dress leaking onto the ice and snow still made him wince. She sat there in shock holding the lower part of her stomach, she didn’t even call out for help. She knew what she had done, and he wondered if she had done it to spite him. She knew he was excited about the pregnancy.
He blamed her but didn’t vocalize it because her tears didn’t cease. Her blue eyes had become duller after that incident, she even cried on the anniversary of the fall, and on the anniversary of the lost child’s expected birthday.
George had wanted to call the girl Gail because he liked the name. No one in Lizzy’s family had that name, and every Gail George had ever known was always graceful. He hadn’t shared the suggestion with Lizzy, because he knew that if he did, she would discuss it with her mom and they would work together to try and change his mind. The bean in her tummy would be called Gail when she was born, and that could only happen if his mother in law was not involved.
The secret reason George blamed Lizzy was that he felt if he’d had a daughter he would have been able to understand women better. His own Mom hadn’t time for him, and in her old age he reciprocated by not having time for her. Having a daughter would have thawed out his icy heart, but Lizzy had robbed him of that chance with her carelessness. If he had held his daughter in his own hands, listened to her gurgle and cry, he would have loved her. He listened to other fathers in the factory where he worked talk about the moment they held their baby girls for the first time. That was the moment he had been looking forward to, it was meeting little Gail and holding the little bundle in his arms and promising to keep her safe, warm, and loved. He knew that by having a baby girl in his life she would have taught him to become a better man. Maybe with her he would have understood his wife better. But Lizzy had taken that away hadn’t she and all because she didn’t listen to him and put on the wrong shoes. He felt his face tighten as it set back into the crags that he usually wore. The death of his unborn daughter was another way Lizzy had disappointed him.
George taunted himself with conversations like this inside his own head while he watched the flickering images of the black and white CRT television. He sat and watched the news, but he didn’t listen. His hand reached down to pet Buster but just a moment of flailing in the air reminded him that even he was gone. He sat alone in his faded fabric light blue armchair in front of the television, a grease stain where his head rested. He was tired, so very tired of it all. He rested his head back and looked up at the white ceiling which was discolored brown by smoke from his pipe.
There was only one answer to his misery and that was that.
Mr. Blades didn’t know why and what had made him a sour old man, he couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment in time. It was an identity he had grown into.
2
George and Lizzy
George Blades was at the mercy of time. His jittery left hand touched his right wrist. The pad of his index finger tracing the round mound of glass on his gold-plated Casio. His hands had been calloused and he lost the sensitivity of his touch, but that was to be expected when you worked a hard manual job in a factory for over thirty years. Punching in and out, he had never once been late for work. Proving that he was reliable and could always be counted on. Even when the unions had encouraged strikes George was there on time.
He had been blindly loyal. Like other men, he used work to escape home and his wife. But that had changed the day they told him he needed to retire. He hated every day of his job since that cold conversation in the manager's office. He still remembered the smug looking manager, who offered him a woodbine cigarette. His ashtray was filthy, and the room full of smoke. His manager, Mr. Clarke, was a whippet. A young man in his thirties, George could have been the same age as his father, but that didn’t matter in the company hierarchy. He still called Mr. Clarke ‘sir.’
“Come in George,” said Mr. Clarke when he knocked on the glass of the office door. George was not used to going into the manager’s office, he wasn’t the kind who liked trouble, so he was more than a little surprised that the man knew his name.
“You asked to see me, sir,” inquired George taking off his cap and hovering by the open office door. He sincerely hoped that it would be a quick conversation and that he would be allowed to get back on with this job.
“Yes, shut the door, take a seat. . .cigarette?” Offered Mr. Clarke holding the pack open.
George complied. “It’s come to my attention that you should be retiring next month.”
“Well, if it’s all the same sir, I’d like to stay on.”
“Really? Don’t you want to get out on the golf course?” asked Mr. Clarke.
That one question jarred him and told him exactly what type of man Mr. Clarke was.
“With all due respect sir, us type of men don’t play golf.”
“Quite! Well, regardless, you are hitting pensionable age soon George and we can’t keep you on. The unions will have a riot if we do.”
“I don’t pay the unions any attention sir.”
“Regardless George, I’m afraid your last day here will be at the end of the month, after which you will be able to draw a pension from the following month. You’ve given us a great service here so your pension I’m told will be adequate.”
“Please sir, don’t let me go? I won’t know what to do with myself,” begged George.
/> Mr. Clarke looked over the rim of his glasses, his eyes cold and uncaring. “I’m afraid George you know my position.”
The cigarette was stubbed out and George felt compelled to stub his out too. Mr. Clarke looked down at his papers pretending to shuffle them from one side of his desk to the other. George stood up and walked away. He opened the glass door and turned one last time, but Mr. Clarke was determined to ignore him. He closed the door and dragged his feet back to his machine.
Being retired meant he would be at home, George didn't care about earning money he just wanted to keep busy and out of Lizzy’s way. Home was her domain, so George Blades swapped the factory for the pub, he sat wearing the gold-plated Casio watch that Mr. Clarke awarded him on his last day as he shook his hand and his colleagues watched him punch his time card for the last time.
He wore it even though it looked at odds against the giant dirty hands that were used to working greasy machines. He had slipped it on and said the right words of thanks and gratitude to his colleagues but being retired was a hard anticlimax. There was no joy left in his life, no one to speak to apart from Julie behind the bar in the pub. George sat with his pint in hand with the other retirees talking about the factory and discussing the news, with their little gray flap caps and the coats they never took off. After he had finished his drink, George always left the glass on the wooden bar as a favor to Julie and shuffled off home.